


There Is A Car

by envythenight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/envythenight/pseuds/envythenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a car, gathering rust in the middle of a forest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is A Car

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off a piece of art I saw once. I can't find it, but once I do, I'll link.

There is a car, gathering rust in the middle of a forest. Everyone in town knows about it. It’s a part of their history, just as much as the haunted house on Maple street and the abandoned police station on Pine. Of course, just like those places, no one knows the true story; each generation makes up a new one. 

The current story: two men were driving through, when they started fighting and crashed. A friend of theirs arrived too late to save them, and overcome with grief, he never left, so that he could always watch over them. The forest grew around them, and the man never moved. 

Jenny, a few houses down, swears blind that she saw the man who watches over the car. She doesn’t have much to say about him, mainly because she ran as soon as he glanced her way. What she does say, is that he has the bluest eyes she’s ever seen. Most people don’t get close enough to see. Most adventurous teenagers simply camp in the woods and tell stories. For some reason, no one wants to go near the car. 

Kyle does. He wants to see for himself the car that inspired a thousand stories, and see the man with the bluest eyes.

He creeps into the forest, following a winding path. No one has ever pinpointed exactly where the car is, but the forest isn’t huge, so he figures he’s bound to run into it eventually. An owl sets off with a screech, and Kyle jumps, breathing heavily and holding a hand to his chest. He bends over and coughs till his breathing returns to normal. He continues forwards until he stops with a small gasp.

He can see it. The forest is tinged a green-blue, almost as though it’s been frozen in time. Through a gap in the trees, he can see a clearing where the rusting car lies. It looks old; far too old to have been here only as long as the legend goes back. Even from this distance he can read the rusted name. Impala. They stopped making Impalas shortly before his dad was born.

As he steps closer, he notices a man standing over the car. There’s a crack as he steps on a twig. He holds his breath. The man’s head, slowly turns towards him. Somehow that makes it even more terrifying than if he’d screamed and attacked him.

His eyes are just as blue as Jenny said. They’re bluer than chipped ice or a winter sky. As long as he lives, Kyle doesn’t think he’ll ever see eyes like that again.

The man turns back to the car, without a word. Kyle steps closer, curiosity overpowering his desire to run. 

“Who are you?” he asks. The man doesn’t reply. The only noise is the sound of his beige overcoat flapping in the non-existent wind.

With this in mind, Kyle thinks it’s safe to step a bit closer. He peers in through the car windscreen, looking for any—

“Their bodies are not there.”

Kyle jumps so badly that he trips over a log and goes crashing to the ground. When he looks up, he expects the man to be looking at him with a small smile, but the man just continues to stare at the car.

“Whose bodies?” Kyle asks. The bodies of the two men from the story? Or someone else’s?

There is a long silence before the man says, “I burned them. It’s what they would have wanted. A hunter’s funeral.”

Kyle thinks the man must be crazy. Yet for some reason, he doesn’t want to run away screaming; he wants to know more about what’s going on inside the man’s mind.

“Who?” Kyle persists. “And who are you?”

There is another long silence. Kyle gets the feeling that the man doesn’t really remember he’s even there. “This is all I have left.”

Kyle reaches out a hand, itching to touch the dying car. The man turns on him so fast, Kyle doesn’t have time to draw breath.

“Don’t touch it!” he snarls. “Get away!”

Kyle backs up as quick as he can. The man seems to remember he’s there for the first time.

“Kyle… Walker,” he says slowly, as though trying to remember something through a fog.

“H— How do you know my name?” he stutters, but the man has already returned his gaze to the car, whispering something that sounds like apologies.

“Castiel.” 

It takes some time before Kyle realises that the man is talking to him. “What?”

“Sam and Dean. The Impala.” The man — Castiel? — pauses. “I was an angel. They were my friends. Heaven had me bound before I could fly to them. They were attacked by demons. Too late.” Silence spreads between them, as Kyle tries to work out why he thinks the man is telling the truth. “Not a good enough death for them.”

“Why are you here?”

“Heaven locked me out. Goaded me.” His voice takes on a dark, terrifying quality. “ _Castiel what is this? I thought you wanted to remain on Earth? I thought there was your home?_ ” His voice returns to its empty tone again. “They all knew that it was them who were my home. Not Earth. Not Heaven.”

“Why do you stay here?”

The man — angel? — doesn’t reply. But then of course, Kyle realises, he’d already said. The car is all he has left. 

“What happened to the bodies?” But of course, Castiel has already answered that too. 

“How long?” Kyle finally asks.

“Sam and Dean died in 2011.”

Kyle pauses, thinking. It doesn’t make sense unless, “So you didn’t know them then? You found out about them after they died?”

“I knew them for years before they died. I have been waiting here since they died.”

“But—” Kyle feels dizzy. “One hundred years?”

“I will wait for thousands. Time has no meaning.”

“Castiel?” Those icy eyes fix on Kyle again. “I will— I’ll—” He doesn’t know what he’ll do. 

Nevertheless, Castiel says, “thank you,” as though Kyle has offered him the world. Castiel turns back to the car, and doesn’t speak again.

 

*

 

Kyle doesn’t tell anyone, ever, what happened. It feels like doing so would break Castiel’s trust. He tries to turn most teenagers away from the forest, because Castiel deserves privacy, but that’s as far as he gets towards telling people what happened that night. 

Kyle tries to go back on more than one occasion, but most of the time he turns back before he’s even left the house. The one time he does go back, he returns to see Castiel crying. Castiel runs his hands across his face, looking at the water droplets in surprise. After a while, the tears start running red. Castiel just watches over the car, ignoring the tears, and whispers, “Father please.” Nothing happens. Kyle leaves, because the feeling of intruding on something private is too great.

When he dies, he’s haunted by the thoughts of Castiel. He doesn’t know what touched him so about that man, but something did. He asks around about Castiel, in Heaven. All the angels fly off without a word, bar one. He doesn’t have much to say, other than to express sadness and say he’s watching over him. He says they used to be friends. 

It must be ages later, when he stumbles across two men whom he can place without thought.

“Sam,” he whispers. “Dean.”

The two men look at each other, and turn back to him with narrowed eyes. 

“Castiel,” Kyle breathes.

“Castiel has been gone for centuries,” the shorter one says sharply. Kyle is sure it’s Dean. He doesn’t know how.

“Castiel.” Kyle can only parrot the same word stupidly, overcome with feelings he can’t place.

“Castiel is gone,” Dean snaps. “Abandoned us.”

“Castiel is…” He gasps out. “The car. Impala.”

“What?” the taller one, Sam, asks with a slight frown.

Kyle buries his face in his hands, breathing in and out heavily. He knows Castiel is still waiting and watching. He saw him before he died, when he saw Castiel crying.

“Waiting. Centuries.” He doesn’t know why he can’t get the words out. 

“What are you talking about?” Sam asks. Kyle takes a deep breath, and forces the words out.

“When I was alive, there was a story about a man who waited in the woods, by a car. I went to find it. I met a man there, who told me some of his life. His name was Castiel. And he was waiting by an Impala, watching over it for Sam and Dean. Heaven had kicked him out. The car was all he had left. So he watched as it turned to rust. He’d been waiting a hundred years when I saw him. He told me he’d wait thousands.” He pauses, looks up at them. Says quietly, “He probably has by now.” 

Sam and Dean look at each other.

There’s just one word said between them, a hollow sound of longing and sadness for something that they’ll never see again. “Castiel.”

And still Castiel waits by the car.


End file.
